


Traces

by nightowls28



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Endgame AU, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Irondad, Memory Loss, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, like... a whole lot of memory loss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2020-06-28 13:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19813138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightowls28/pseuds/nightowls28
Summary: "People fall out of the world sometimes, but they always leave traces. Little things we can’t quite account for. Faces in photographs. Luggage. Half-eaten meals. Rings. Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely. And, if something can be remembered, it can come back."Endgame AU. (Fix-it, maybe? I don’t know.) It's the world Post-Blip. Everyone has come back, and they've defeated Thanos. Everything is supposed to feel like it is getting back to normal.But something is off. Peter feels it deep in his gut, and seems to be the only one. He knows somebody snapped their fingers to defeat Thanos, he just can’t remember who. That’s the problem - nobody can remember.Basically...... Tony disappears from the fabric of the universe after snapping his fingers and Peter is the only one who can get him back.(I've been thinking about this Doctor Who quote and Endgame for a long time so this is what came from it)





	1. One

Peter doesn’t remember the first snap. He does remember an orange, rocky planet. He remembers Doctor Strange, and the ragtag gang of outer space bounty hunters he somehow ended up with. He remembers Thanos, and then he remembers nothing. The memory is blurry and maybe, he thinks, just maybe, it’s because he turned to dust. 

That’s what Steve tells him anyway.

Peter does, however, remember the second snap. He remembers waking up on the orange planet, and not knowing how they’d ever get back to Earth. Until Doctor Strange opened portals in space, that is. He remembers Steve’s mighty battle cry when they returned (and thinks that Ned would have loved to hear it), because even Peter got chills from it. He remembers the Avengers - all of them - fighting Thanos and his army. 

Peter remembers stifling hot air and tired muscles. He remembers feeling overwhelmed, and terrified, and exhilarated all at once. The dodging of bombs, and attack after attack. Carrying the gauntlet. He remembers thinking in the back of his mind about just how cool it would be if they all got out of it alive. He remembers feeling like they were going to win, and he remembers feeling like they were going to lose. 

Thanos’ army was relentless and seemingly infinite. He remembers that it seemed to be a fight against logic or reason... for Peter anyway. His mind could barely keep up with the attacks coming from all sides. There was nothing he could do but to keep punching and webbing whatever showed up in front of him. It didn’t seem like there was a way out until --

 _Snap_. 

Peter remembers the snap clearly because that was the moment it all changed. The aliens he was fighting drifted away. He remembers falling to his knees, his tired limbs burning. Exhausted. Elated. And he remembers watching as across the remains of the compound all of Thanos’ army was turned to dust. 

It was surreal. Seeing Thanos’ army vanish, and then facing his teammates - the other Avengers - and seeing their faces echoing his feelings. Sweaty. Tired. Ecstatic. Because they did it. They really did it. They beat Thanos.

He remembers the cheers once Thanos’ army disappeared. They were firey and elated. Full of exhaustion and joy. Pure joy. He was standing in the middle of the battlefield, and far away someone let out a cheer, and then, suddenly, everyone was joining in. A chorus of the happiest music he’s ever heard. He remembers Bucky, the guy with the cool-looking metal arm, running at him to scoop him up in a hug before dropping him and running to do the same with the others. 

Peter remembers the feeling of pure joy running through his veins. He remembers that specifically because right now, only seconds later, Peter finds himself on his knees, staring at the gauntlet lying forgotten in the dirt fifty feet away, and he’s crying. Tears have tracked themselves down his cheeks, and he doesn’t know how they got there, because he is _not_ sad. Peter is happy. They beat Thanos. He’s supposed to be happy.

It doesn’t make sense. The gauntlet is just lying there as if it wasn’t what everyone had been going after only minutes before. Peter can’t take his eyes off the gauntlet, because it feels wrong. No, wrong isn’t quite the right word for it. 

Sad. It makes him feel unbearably sad. 

But that doesn’t make sense. So Peter plays every second of the battle over, and over again in his head. _Doctor Strange’s weird portals. Steve’s battle cry. Running with the gauntlet. The cool fiery space lady. The second snap. Thanos’ army disappearing. Relief. Joy._

Still, Peter’s throat is thick, and his chest clenches painfully, and tears continue to fall. How can he be crying if he doesn’t remember starting to cry at all? 

Peter stands on shaky legs and stumbles towards the gauntlet. He doesn’t touch it, but circles it, searching. Something is off, and he can’t quite seem to grasp why. That’s when he starts to spiral. He can feel it coming, the circular thinking. Because it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t--

“Queens!” Peter jolts at the voice from behind him. He stops in his tracks and turns to find Steve Rogers making his way towards him slowly. “You alright?”

They hadn’t ever talked, not really, besides that fight in Germany, but Steve studies Peter carefully, and when Steve’s eyes finally meet his, Peter registers his expression to be one of… relief? Gratitude? Maybe a bit of both. Peter mostly notices that Steve’s looking older. There are small wrinkles around his eyes now. And they're tired eyes. 

Peter’s eyes flicker between Steve and the gauntlet behind him. His head is fuzzy, and he’s finding it hard to concentrate because the air feels like it’s vibrating against his skin. “Yeah, I just... I-- How did this happen?”

Steve smiles, weary. “We won, Peter. You’re back.” He puts a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “I know someone who is going to be so happy to see you. He… he was so scared he lost you, kid. You were gone for a long time.”

 _Kid_. That itches at Peter. Steve’s hand is warm on his shoulder, comforting. Grounding. But his mind is whirring a mile a minute because something is missing. Someone is--

“Who?” Peter asks quickly “Who’s going to be happy to see me?” It doesn’t make sense. He has May and Ned, but Steve doesn’t know them. There is nobody else. 

Steve blinks. “What?”

Peter’s getting impatient now. His skin feels like it’s crawling. “You just said someone is going to be happy to see me. Who were you talking about?” It’s right _there_ and Peter can’t place it.

Apparently neither can Steve. 

Steve shakes his head, confused. “I don’t remember. I--”

Peter studies him carefully, and notices as tears well up in Steve’s eyes. He’s searching for an answer just out of reach--

And then someone calls out for Steve somewhere behind them, and his attention is interrupted. Steve blinks the tears away, and just like that he seems fine. Normal. “One minute!” Is all yells back to whoever called him.

“Who is gonna be happy to see me?” Peter asks once more. But already, like Steve, it’s fading from his mind like sand slipping through his fingers. 

Like people turning to dust.

Steve gives him a small smile. “Your family, for starters.”

Peter sighs. “That’s not what I--”

But Steve is yelling with some of the other Avengers again, so Peter drops it. He glances at the gauntlet once more, and suddenly he can’t focus. Something isn’t right. There’s something just out of sync, vibrating at an energy just a _little_ different than it should. 

“Something’s wrong,” Peter says. Something is off. So, so off. He can feel it in his bones, and in the way his hair stands on the back of his neck. “Don’t you feel it?”

Steve shakes his head. “Thanos is gone, Peter. For good. We’re in the clear.”

Peter sighs. “It doesn’t seem like it.”

Steve pats his hand on Peter’s shoulder once and then takes it away, and Peter feels cold. “We’ll get through it. Together. One foot after the other, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Peter agrees. He’s got to admire the optimism. 

Steve reaches down and picks up the gauntlet gingerly. “Doctor Strange is going to get you home.”

Peter lets out a small noise of protest, looking around at the wreckage of the compound. “No! Come on, Mr. Rogers, I want to help.” 

Steve laughs tiredly at that. “That Steve, to you. But the battle’s over, kid. There’s not much to do until we figure out what our next steps are. For now, go see your aunt and your friends. I’m sure they’ve missed you.” Peter doesn’t say anything, because he feels dead tired, and he’d love nothing more than to see Aunt May right now. With that, Steve turns around and jogs over to a group in the distance. 

Within minutes, Doctor Strange is opening a portal. He takes one last look back at the battlefield and tries to ignore the twisting in his stomach before he steps through the orange-yellow circle and arrives back in Queen’s. 

\---

What Peter doesn’t remember is watching Mr. Stark - Tony - snap his fingers. He doesn’t remember the gut-wrenching sight of Mr. Stark leaning against a rock, eyes glazed over. He doesn’t remember begging, pleading. _We won, Mr. Stark. We won._

Because as soon as he closed his eyes turned away - as soon as everyone blinked - Tony was gone. All of him, even his memory. All that was left was the gauntlet, lying forgotten in the dirt. 

\---

Doctor Strange’s portal drops him back into his old bedroom. Only apparently it’s not his anymore because the walls are pale yellow, and there’s a rocking chair in the corner, and pictures on the walls that are not his, and a sleeping baby in a crib, and _oh shit oh shit oh shit_. Peter stumbles out of the room as quietly as he can to find a woman sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea.

“I am so, so sorry. Please don’t be scared.” The words are tumbling out of Peter’s mouth a mile a minute. “This used to be my bedroom, and I was just trying to get home, and I’m just looking for my Aunt, and --”

She only looks a little shocked at the sight of a teenager emerging from the nursery, but the shock quickly transforms into a smile. “May!” She calls. “I think there’s someone here you’d like to see.” 

Peter’s confused. “You know May?”

The woman laughs. “She blipped back here, same as you. She’s the one who gave me a fright.”

Peter hears the bathroom door open down the hall, followed by a loud shriek. “Peter!” And when he turns, May is _there._

Her hair is wet, and she’s got him in her arms in a second. He thinks that maybe this isn’t their apartment anymore, but it still feels like coming home. Peter cries and holds on tight. “I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry.” He mumbles. 

“Peter, oh my god.” She pulls back and looks him over. Her hands are at his face wiping away dirt, and blood, and sweat. “You’re not any older.”

“What? No. No, I’m not.” Peter says. “The snap. I… I, um… you know.” He wiggles his fingers to motion fading away. It’s the first chance he has to really look at her, and she doesn’t seem older either. She looks exactly the same as the day Peter went off into space with--

With who?

He shakes his head. It doesn’t matter. 

“You’re not any older either.” He states, and May laughs. 

“Nope, I still got it.” She exclaims with a quick little dance. “I did feel a little stale though, coming back. Thanks for the shower, by the way, Jenny.”

The baby cries out from Peter’s room. No, the nursery. The woman at the table groans softly. “Yeah, yeah, you’re both still young. But not as young as that thing in there, so please keep it down.”

“Sorry about that.” May winces as the woman sneaks into the nursery. 

“Do you know her or something?” Peter asks once Jenny is gone. 

May scoffs. “Of course not. I did blip back sitting right next to her at the table. I swear to god, I thought she was going to have a heart attack.” May shrugged. “I asked her what she was doing in my apartment, and she explained everything to me. Then we turned on the news, they reported that it seemed like everyone was back. I'm sure you can imagine how I felt when they said that, but I couldn’t get a hold of you. Just like how I couldn’t get a hold of you the day it happened.”

Peter winces at this. He should have called her when Thanos’ army showed up. He knows this. Maybe he should’ve just gone home when he was told.

_Friday, send him home._

It’s an echo of something he can't quite remember.

“Where were you?” May asks calmly, and it’s all Peter can do but to thank whatever god or force that was out there that she’s so calm because he really can’t handle anyone getting mad right now.

So Peter tries his best at a joke. “I don’t think any of us really remember where we were, Aunt May.” It’s not funny, even he can tell. Instead, Peter tries his best to downplay the last… five hours? No… five years. “Uhhh, space?” Is all he can come up with. 

May’s face shifts. She crosses her arms and he can tell she’s pissed. “Space.” She repeats. 

“Only for a bit. Then I was at the compound.” Peter tries a half-hearted smile. 

“How on earth did you get to space?” May asks “You were supposed to be on a field trip.”

If only Peter could remember. He tried to, he really did. But the more he thought about it, the more his head felt like it was going to split. He settles for a simple “It’s a really long story.”

It’s enough. Maybe she’d have asked more questions if the day hadn’t felt quite as long, but Peter was exhausted, and he could tell May was as well. So May accepts his non-answer and throws her arms around him once more. “You know what, it doesn’t matter.”

Peter simply returns the hug. “I think we’re going to have to find a new apartment.” 

May groans. “God, I hate apartment hunting.” She pauses “But I’m glad you’re back, Peter. That we’re back. Everyone’s back. Apartment hunting is worth that.”

Peter’s eyes start to water again, and he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t feel the way he did at the compound - like his blood was flowing the wrong way - but still, his skin crawls. 

He tries his best to ignore this as he squeezes Aunt May. She’s right. They did it... they beat Thanos and everyone is back. Peter is supposed to feel good. 

“Yeah.” he says “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Tony's relationship makes my heart hurt, and Endgame made me sad, so here you go! Let me know what you think?


	2. Two

As kind as Jenny-the-single-mother-who-lives-in-their-old-apartment is, she wasn’t about to let two strangers stay there (even if they _were_ blipped), so May and Peter end up staying at Ned’s until they can figure out whatever it is they’re supposed to do next.

Ned’s mom smothers Peter in kisses when they show up at his door. It’s mushy and wet, but familiar and Peter doesn’t have it in him to push her away. When she finally lets go to bring May in for a hug, Peter spots Ned coming down the hallway, still a nerdy teenager and not a day older. Peter lets out the biggest grin he’s had all day and jumps on him, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug that Ned returns just as enthusiastically.

Peter thanks every star in the sky that Ned also disappeared. (Yes, he _knows_ it must have been hard for Ned’s parents, but he tells himself that he’s allowed to be a little selfish. He doesn’t know what he’d do if Ned was five years older and five years too cool for him).

Peter and May stay on the pull out couch in the living room and try their best not to get in the way of Ned’s family. They’re welcoming and kind, but there are already five of them, seven now, counting Peter and May, stuffed in a small New York apartment with one bathroom. Ned’s mom keeps telling them that they’re no trouble - it’s nice to have people around again. So, for now, they stay. Because it’s the closest they have to a home right now. Because it’s the best they can do until the harder stuff gets figured out.

Until people can understand how to move forward.

The government is overwhelmed at first, which is to be understood. All of a sudden half the population returns. There are people looking to reconnect with loved ones, people out of housing, out of jobs. But ten hours after everyone is blipped back, there are Crisis Centres located on every block. Peter supposes that’s step one — making sure people are looked after. That’s something The Avengers aren’t equipped to handle.

Ned’s mom sends Ned and Peter to a Crisis Centre with four trays of homemade sandwiches. It’s crowded, and overwhelming, but strangely calming. People are ready to help. Peter and Ned get in a long line of people donating food, and wait patiently, inching their way to the donation window one step at a time.

The government tries to reassure them that somehow things will get back to the way they were.  
Peter highly doubts that.

\---

They play a board game the third day after the blip to celebrate May getting her job back. Peter and Ned convince everyone to play one with too many rules that are probably a little too complicated for a laid-back family evening, but nobody has the heart to fight it. There are snacks on the table, and the adults (now including one of Ned’s sisters) have cracked open a bottle of wine. It’s lazy and simple. Peter likes how easy it is to lose himself in the game. To have stakes that aren’t life and death. That aren’t even real. It makes it seem like things are pretty normal. Like they feel right.

But Peter knows they aren’t, because that raw itching is still there in the pit of his stomach. It’s there when he reaches for the bowl of chips Ned’s mom put out. It’s there when he gloriously loses half his pieces to one of Ned’s sisters. There’s something wrong, something digging and gnawing at his bones. But he tries to ignore it, because it’s a whirlwind couple of days, and he supposes he’s allowed that. And sometimes, like when he draws two wild cards in a row and somehow has enough pieces to defeat Ned’s army, he can.

That night when Peter and May settle onto the springy mattress of the pullout couch, Peter pulls out his phone like he has every night so far, to find his notification wall empty. For the third night in a row, he’s met with nothing.

May turns off the light and notices the glow from Peter’s phone.

“Who are you expecting to hear from?” May asks, “You’ve been clutching that phone like a lifeline the past few days.”

“Steve. He said he’d “be in touch”.” Peter adds sarcastic air quotes.

May sighs. “Peter, the battle is over. You don’t have to keep waiting for the other pin to drop. If they need you, they’ll call. Until then, just be here. Be sixteen, and play dumb games, and spend time with the people you care about. We’ve missed enough time, let’s not miss anymore.”

Peter hums in agreement, but his stomach clenches uneasily.

May studies him. “Is anything else bothering you?”

Peter shrugs and turns his phone off. He lays it on the end table. “No.” He says. He pulls the sheets up to his neck and closes his eyes.

Sleep takes a long time to come.

\---

He tells Ned about it when they’re out for a walk two days later. Ned’s mom has forced them out, saying that the fresh air will do them good, and it does. Peter swears that it’s the cleanest his lungs have ever felt in New York. The thought is nice for a minute until he remembers what happened to get that fresh air. After that, it tastes bitter.

“Do you feel weird at all? Since coming back, I mean.” Peter asks, sipping on a cherry slurpee.

Ned shrugs. “Not really. It feels weird that my parents are practically grey. And that my sisters are technically older than me. And that _three_ Star Wars movies came out while we were gone. How did they not lose anyone in their whole cast?” Ned pauses a moment.

Ned pauses. Then at the same time say “Conspiracy.”

It leads them into easy laughter until Peter tries again. “No... like... _physically_ do you feel weird? I don’t know, it’s like my stomach is all messed up. And like there’s something I can’t see but… I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Not any more than normal. I ate a burrito yesterday that did not sit well, but that is very normal for me... Maybe this sprung, like, a second puberty on you?”

Peter glares at him. “I’m serious.”

Ned shakes his head. “That’s all you, man. Must be your weird spidey senses. Or the fact that you were in space. Maybe you’re missing the action? You haven’t gone out in a while. You know… as Spiderman?”

“Maybe” Peter concedes. But he knows that’s not it. It’s something else, but what good does it do if he can’t even describe what he’s feeling. The crawling under his skin, the loss of something that he used to have. Something that is constantly _just_ out of reach.

Not knowing exactly what it is.

He ends up going patrolling that night because he can’t take not being in the suit anymore.

When Peter comes back to Ned’s apartment for a quick bathroom break, he’s met with a stern Aunt May. She’s worried, and he gets it. He promises to be careful, and he promises to just keep helping the little guy. Most of all, he promises not to go to space this time. May lets him go again with the assurance that he has his cell phone on him, and that he’ll reach out in case anything goes wrong. But nothing goes wrong. He stops a mugging on 81st, helps a kid who lost his parents, and rescues no fewer than three cats stuck in trees.

His suit is quiet, and he can’t tell why that feels wrong.

But mostly it’s a pretty average night, all things considered. That’s five pretty average nights, now, since the Blip.

He lies in bed and checks his phone, throwing it down with a huff when he sees nothing. Steve still hasn’t called.

\---

When his phone rings late the next afternoon, Peter scrambles to answer it. He’s building a model x-wing with Ned and almost crashes his hand right through it at the shrill noise. Ned pulls the model away quickly with a low “Oh my god.”

Peter’s already sitting on Ned’s bed, though. Phone in hand. It’s an unknown number.

“Uh… Hello?” He asks dumbly into the phone.

There’s some shuffling and then… “Peter! How are you?” It’s Pepper. Her voice is smooth and comforting. Peter holds his breath, and she continues. “Sorry it took me a few days to call. Things have been a little crazy around here.”

It’s the first time he’s heard from her — from anyone close to the Avengers — since the battle at the compound, and he doesn’t think he ever wants her to stop talking. Her voice is like a lifeline to a version of himself that seems so, so far away.

“No! No, it’s ok. It’s good to hear from you.” Peter smiles. He glances back at Ned and holds up a finger. With a roll of his eyes, Ned lies on the floor in a huff. “Is everything… ok?”

“Everything’s as good as it can be. Which means that everything’s a mess, but we’re sorting through it.” Pepper says “I have a surprise for you. One you’ll like, I hope.”

“A surprise,” Peter says dumbly.

Pepper laughs. “A good one. We put all the stuff from your apartment in storage after the blip. The building was going to new owners and… well… He always hoped he’d find a way to get you back one day. So tell May—”

Petter feels queasy. “He?”

The silence is deafening. Then Pepper recovers.

“What? No, sorry I meant we hoped. God, that was weird wasn’t it.” Peter says nothing, and Pepper continues. “Anyway, all your stuff is safe. Where are you and May staying?”

“At Ned’s.” Peter picks at a thread on Ned’s comforter. “We’ve been here all week.”

“All seven of you in that apartment?”

“You know Ned’s family?” Peter counters her immediately.

“I know a lot of things.” She pauses. “Listen, I have a few contacts in real estate. I could help you and May find a place if you’d like. Close to school and everything.”

Peter closes his eyes. “Pepper, that’s amazing but you—”

She stops him. “Don’t worry about it, Peter. I’m happy to do it. You know you’re family, right?”

Peter’s heart stutters at that. He’s not sure why.

“Just get May to give me a call when she has a minute. We can sort out the details. I don’t want you worrying about anything, ok?” Peter is silent, and Pepper has to push again. “Peter?”

“Yeah.” Peter sighs. “Ok. I’ll get her to call you. Thanks, Pepper. You’re amazing.”

“Don’t mention it. And I have one more surprise for you... There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Peter hears the sound of a door shut and then there’s a wild scream. “How does dinner on Thursday sound?”

\---

The one downside of May getting her job back is that she pretty much has no free time. It turns out that people blipping back is hard on the already small staff the hospital has, and with the influx of blip-related injuries, it’s all hands on deck.

It also means that May has to work on Thursday night instead of going to dinner at Pepper’s.

Happy shows up at Ned’s apartment, meeting Peter and May outside the door. Peter throws his arms around Happy without a second thought. May makes Happy promise to take good care of Peter and makes Peter promise that he won’t be out too late.

Peter promises, begrudgingly, and Happy swears on his life that he’ll have Peter back at a reasonable hour. This earns a sweet smile from May and Peter _swears_ that Happy blushes. He lets out a little scoff of disgust before getting into the car. That is not something he wants to deal with.

\---

“Hey, Happy?” Peter asks. They’ve been outside the city for a half hour speeding down a highway, but it’s a different way than how they would normally go towards the compound. That’s when he realizes that he doesn’t actually know where Pepper is staying now.

“Hmm?” Happy hums, glancing over at Peter.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Peter’s eyebrows furrow. The sun is setting beyond the trees, and the sky is cast in pink.

“I forgot you haven’t been here yet. We’re going to the Lakehouse. They moved out here three months after the Snap. Blip. Whatever it’s called.”

There it is again. Pepper and _who_?

“They?”

“Pepper.”

They drive a while longer and finally when they cruise around a bend, Peter sees it. There at the edge of a lake - a small house nestled into the forest. Smoke curling from the chimney. Light on over the door. Toolshed at the side of the house.

They get out of the car. It smells nice out here. Clean. Even cleaner than New York post-Blip.

Peter supposes he’ll take that.

The flower beds around the porch are trimmed neatly, and Peter walks up the front steps slowly, taking it in. It doesn’t feel real - like he’s stepped out of time or something, because this place is buzzing. Peter can feel it on the back of his neck, and in the sweat on his chest that’s making his shirt stuck to him uncomfortably. Happy knocks at the door and Peter notices a toolbox lying haphazardly against a chair on the porch. It’s bright red with a gold handle, and Peter swears he’s seen it before and—

“Peter!” The door opens and Pepper is standing in front of him, a warm smile on her face.

“Hi Pepper,” He says, and freezes. He’s paranoid here, anxious beyond all reason. Pepper steps out of the house to pull him into a hug.

 _Ah_. Ok. Things are gonna be ok.

“Sorry” Peter says. He’s tearing up, and he’s not quite sure why. “I don’t know where this came from.” Pepper only shushes him and rubs her hand against his back.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for Peter, you hear me?” She pulls back and looks him dead in the eye. He smiles and nods. “It’s been a weird week for everyone. I’m just happy you’re back.”

Peter follows her in. His skin still itches, but it’s dull. Peter’s determined that it can be ignored. Forgotten, completely, if he gets distracted. And very quickly, he is. As soon as they’re inside there’s a loud squeal, and then a blur of brown hair runs by Peter and launches itself onto Happy.

But Happy isn’t surprised. He embraces the blur of hair with a loud “Hey Kiddo!” Peter blinks then, and the blur is not a misshapen figure - it’s a little girl.

His eyes go wide, and his mouth goes dry. He looks between Pepper and Happy, unspeaking. Pepper only smiles knowingly, the way she always seems to do.

“This is my surprise. Peter, meet Morgan. My daughter.” Pepper rubs his shoulder gently.

“You’re… wow.” Is all Peter can say. Morgan is wiggling in Happy’s arms to be released, so he lets her down on the floor, and she runs to cling onto Pepper’s leg.

“Morgan, do you want to say hi?” Pepper asks gently.

Peter crouches down so he’s at eye level with her. But Morgan doesn’t move, her face still hidden.

“Hi Morgan, I’m Peter. Peter Parker.” He says and waits. Slowly, she turns her head and meets Peter’s eyes.

And it almost knocks him backward because... _those eyes_. He’s seen them before. They’re familiar and foreign, and it doesn't make sense because he definitely has never met this kid before, but he knows her eyes. He knows her eyes so well.

Peter stands up quickly and stumbles back. He feels like he’s going to be sick.

Morgan, in turn, frowns at him and runs upstairs.

Peter tries not to feel guilty. “Sorry, I—”

Pepper shakes her head. “She’ll take to you eventually. She’s been off this week.” She smiles, but Peter can tell by the way she glances after Morgan that she’s worried. “It doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s get to work. The casserole is in the oven but the table isn’t gonna set itself.”

\---

Pepper tells Peter about the last five years while they set the table. He’s heard it all before — from Jenny-the-mom-who-lives-in-his-old-apartment, from the news, from Ned’s parents — but it’s different coming from Pepper. In a way, it hurts more. May, at least, also disappeared. Peter couldn’t miss her, and she couldn’t miss Peter. Pepper, and Happy, and Rhodey, and… Steve lost _everyone_. He feels it when Pepper tells him about it — The devastation, the hopelessness.

A tunnel with no light at the end.

Peter listens. Pepper tells him how much she missed him, how much they all did. How it felt like they failed.

How wrecked she was… how wrecked Steve was when Nebula came back from space without Peter.

Peter stumbles over a weird metal gadget under a chair and tries not to think about how it doesn’t make sense. Steve barely knew him.

Peter barely knows Steve.

\---

Morgan comes down for dinner but stays silent. She eats her carrots at Pepper’s insistence and doesn’t take her wide eyes off of Peter the whole time.

It’s unsettling, really.

Peter tries to ignore it. Eventually, Pepper tells her firmly “It’s not polite to stare, Mo.” After that Morgan only stares in the split seconds when Pepper glances away or throws her head back in a laugh.

She’s a smart kid, Peter can give her that.

Once the ice cream shows up Morgan only has eyes for one thing, and Peter is nothing but a distant memory.

Happy is handing Peter the tub when there’s a knock at the door. Pepper checks her watch and rolls her eyes.

“Figures,” She mutters, “I thought he was supposed to be a stand-up citizen. I tell him we’re eating at six and eight he shows up.” Pepper scoots back in her chair and heads towards the front door.

As soon as she’s gone, Morgan takes up staring at Peter again silently.

Peter can’t meet her eyes, though, because it hurts in a way that rips through him. Instead, he glances at Happy for backup. “Are you seeing this?”

Happy only shrugs. “She’s five. What am I supposed to do?” Peter notices Morgan’s sweet smile at Happy - she’s got him wrapped around her finger.

Peter slumps back in his chair and scoops some ice cream in his bowl with a disheartened _hmph_. He tries not to focus on Morgan and instead trains his ears to listen to the front door that just slammed shut.

“Sorry I’m late, Pepper. These talks are a nightmare.”

Peter freezes then because it’s Steve. The same Steve Rogers who said he’d call, but who Peter hadn’t heard from in over a week. _The same Steve Rogers who dropped him back into normal life like there was nothing wrong and abandoned him._

The same Steve Rogers who, if he remembers it logically, is practically a stranger to him.

Then, Peter’s brain starts firing on all cylinders. Talks? He hadn’t heard anything about them. He was _supposed_ to be an Avenger now, too. Didn’t that mean anything?

Pepper mutters something, and he only regains his focus when Steve speaks again. “Yeah, Rhodey’s got the team going at the compound, trying to clean some stuff up before we can bring in the contractors. I don’t want anyone getting hurt if there’s anything radioactive or alien or... _whatever_ left there.”

He barely has time to wiggle himself out of his slump when Pepper comes around the corner. She takes her seat at the head of the table again and busies herself with scooping out a small bowl of ice cream for Morgan.

He hears a beeping, then Steve enters a moment later with a plate of steaming food. He sits directly across from Peter. He’s got circles under his eyes, and dirt smeared on one cheek. He’s sweaty, and tired, and doesn’t look at Peter.

“Hey, Morgan.” Steve says “How’s that fort coming along?”

Morgan frowns at Steve. “Mommy said we were eating at 6.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I shouldn't have been late.”

Morgan says nothing but turns to her ice cream. Steve finally lifts his eyes to meet Peter’s.

“Queens.” Steve smiles at him. It’s gentle and warm, but Peter doesn’t feel it.

“Captain.” Is all he replies. It’s low, and even he can hear the ice in it. Peter _swears_ it’s not just him being a petty teenager. He has a reason to be mad.

Steve bites his tongue for a moment and picks up his fork. “Thought I said you could call me Steve.”

“And I thought you said you’d be in touch,” Peter says. Ok, now his voice sounds petulant, even to his ears.

Peter hears Happy’s sharp breath and Pepper’s sigh.

“Mommy, Peter said that with a bad attitude.” Morgan tattles. “You said I get in trouble when I do that.”

Peter’s stomach drops and he feels guilty as ever. Pepper had invited him over, and now he’s being a bad influence to Morgan, and ruining dinner. He looks to Pepper helplessly, but she has her eyes closed.

“I think Peter and Steve need to have a talk about that, don’t you sweetie? And I think it’s bedtime for you.” Pepper says. It’s not a question, and she doesn’t give Morgan time to respond before she’s scooping her out of her chair and nodding her head to Happy to follow them. She turns to Peter and Steve before heading towards the stairs to glare and say “Sort this out.”

With that, she’s gone and Peter can’t bring himself to look Steve in the eyes.

Steve puts down his fork. “I said I’d be in touch when we know what the next steps are.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “It sounds like you know what the next steps are. What, everyone is helping out at the compound but me? I’m supposed to be an Avenger, aren’t I? I should be helping. Whatever comes next, I need to be there.”

There’s a sigh. “Peter, you’re supposed to be a kid. I’ve heard that so many times over the last five years that it’s seared into my brain, and I’m inclined to agree.”

This raises a scoff from Peter. He shoves his chair back and stands up from the table, angry. He meets Steve’s eyes for the first time all night, and he’s not expecting the exhausted resignation he sees. “Give me a break. Is that what I was when I was fighting Thanos with you? A kid?”

“You were an emergency call up.”

Peter laughs. It’s hollow. “Right. Ok.” He turns away, practically fuming.

“Wait,” Steve says. Peter looks back to see Steve running his hands over his face. “I didn’t mean… Yes, you’re an Avenger, ok? But you’re also a teenager. He wouldn’t have asked for your help with Thanos if we had any other choice. He wishes you never had to get involved in something that big.” Peter’s stomach drops again, but Steve doesn’t notice and continues on. “It’s been a long five years, and you’ve been missed a lot around here. I want to give you as much time being a kid as you can get. There’s nothing going on right now. You don’t need to be at the compound sorting through rubble. Take a break from the big leagues, just for a bit.”

_I’m back up._

_No, you’re a stowaway. The adults are talking._

Peter shakes his head at the unnamed memory and focuses back on Steve. “You realize you did it again, right? Everyone keeps doing it. You keep talking about someone who isn’t there.”

“What?”

“‘He’” Peter quotes back to Steve without a beat. “You said ‘he wishes you never had to get involved in something that big.’ Everyone keeps talking about a ‘he’, but nobody remembers _why_.”

Steve shakes his head. “I meant… I don’t know why that slipped out.”

“I know you don’t.” Peter continues. “I know you don’t because you keep doing it, and you don’t even realize. You, and Happy, and Pepper, and it doesn’t make sense and I don’t know why. And then you go off and you can pretend like there’s nothing wrong but there is. There has got to be something cosmically wrong, or else I am so fu—”

Steve raises his eyebrows, and Peter stops in the middle of the word. But Steve doesn’t berate him, instead, he studies Peter intently. It’s uncomfortable. Steve eventually leans forward, placing his elbows on the table and is about to speak when Peter interrupts him.

“Like this.” Peter gestures wildly between him and Steve. “Pepper said you were wrecked when I didn’t come back from space. But that doesn’t make sense. I know the Captain America we watch in the PSAs at school but that’s it. I don’t know Steve Rogers. We’ve met, what, once? Other than the Compound after Thanos? Once, in Germany, where we were fighting each other. I don’t know about you, but I can’t even remember what that was _about_. So why do I feel like I should be looking to you for some kind of guidance, or reassurance, or whatever I’m looking for right now? Why have I been waiting for you to call all week, hoping you’ll say that there’s something we can fight that’s going to fix whatever is going on with me.”

“Peter—” is all Steve says, but he says it with such care and concern it makes Peter feel like he’s going to cry.

“It’s because I know that _someone_ told me that when it comes down to it, I can trust you. You always know what to do Steve.”

Peter’s throat constricts then because he knows it’s not Steve’s fault.

“I feel like I’m going crazy,” Peter admits. He sits back down and shifts uncomfortably. “Ever since the Thanos. I feel different. There’s something wrong. Everything is warped, and I feel like I’m missing something, but I can’t tell what it is. I’m looking for something that should be here, but I don’t know what it is.”

Steve shakes his head “You’re not crazy.”

“It’s worse here.” Peter continues, “It was the bad right after the snap at the Compound, and it was bad in New York. But it’s worse again now. The air is vibrating, and my skin is itching, and I can’t seem to look Morgan in the eyes because it _hurts_. I’ve seen those eyes somewhere and I don’t know where. I mean, I try to think about the first time I got my suit, but if I think about it too hard, my head goes all fuzzy. I can’t remember how I got it.”

Steve stands up and comes around to sit in the chair next to Peter’s. He places his hand on Peter’s shoulder and rubs it gently. It’s comforting, but Peter wishes it was someone else’s hand.

“I should have checked in,” Steve says. “I feel it too. I know I’m misremembering things. My mouth has been saying things my head can’t remember all week. I try to remember, and there’s nothing there. You’re not alone in this, and I’m sorry that I made you feel like you are.” There’s a hitch in his breath, and Steve continues “We’ll get to the bottom of it, ok? Together. Whatever it takes.”

“How are we supposed to fight something we can’t remember?” Peter asks.

Steve doesn’t answer. Peter doesn’t know what he's hoping to hear anyway.


	3. Three

Before he leaves Pepper’s that night, Steve convinces Peter not to do anything drastic. 

“We don’t know anything yet, Peter.” Steve pleads. “Nothing other than the fact that it’s affecting our memory. I don’t want you running blindly into something we know nothing about. We need to be careful and take this one slow, okay?”

Peter agrees only because he’s thankful to have someone he can talk to about it. There’s someone who will help him look into it. The first step, they decide, is to try to jog their memories. Slip into the area where the pain comes, and see what they can find. It’s a manageable way for Steve to work on it while still juggling Post-Blip paperwork and politics (that are hell, not that he’d use that word) and the gigantic mess which at one point was the Compound. 

“Give it a few days. We’ll see what we can come up with.” Steve says. “We get help, then we make an action plan.”

Peter can do a few days. 

\---

In the meantime, Peter returns to his post-blip mess, determined to help May out and make it through the next few weeks as seamlessly as possible, balancing trying to remember with the practical stuff.

Like the fact that May and Peter _really_ need their own place. 

It only takes three more days and an abundance of arguing for Peter and May to find an apartment. Pepper’s real estate contact has a seemingly endless list of available apartments, and it’s easy for them to settle. It’s on the third floor of a short five-floor building, about ten minutes from their old apartment. Yes, it’s quite a bit smaller, but it feels _so so so_ much bigger than Ned’s apartment, which really is the number one priority right now. 

It’s only a twenty-minute subway ride to school, and a short drive from a highway that’s a straight shot up to the Compound. That was one of his requirements. It’s also got a washer and dryer _in_ the apartment. That was one of May’s requirements. 

It’s been sitting empty for a long time, dusty and stuffy, but it’s nothing they can’t fix. Peter’s looking forward to a mindless problem he can tackle with his hands. Letting his head zone out, he decides, is the best way to remember. 

\---

**Peter Parker (4:32 pm):** ****_**Maybe we’re being affected by some kind of post-Thanos poison.** _

****Steve Rogers (4:38 pm):** ** _**It’s nothing any of our sensors or tests can pick up and Bruce tells me we have a lot of those. Let’s try to stick to memory, Pete.** _

\---

Happy shows them to the storage locker where Pepper had packed away their apartment. It takes them two full days to rifle through it. 

“We’re doing three piles,” May says, as soon as the door is pulled up. The storage locker is packed from floor to ceiling with… what Peter begrudgingly admits looks like junk. “Keep, donate, and trash.”

May’s got her hair back and her game face on. She’s more than ready to tackle the mess. Peter grows less convinced by the second looking at the mountain of things in front of them. 

“May, this is going to take forever.” Peter just about groans. 

May grabs the first box, labeled “kitchen”. Peter watches as she pulls some bizarre as-seen-on-tv tool out of it and tosses it in the donation box. “This is our opportunity to do the apartment gut of my dreams. Do you know how much junk we’ve collected over the years?” May pulls out a cracked cheese grater and tosses it into the trash. “We’re downsizing. Grab a box.”

Peter lets out a small huff (which May ignores) and gets started. 

They get through a little over half of the storage locker on the first day, and when Peter and May go back to their new apartment that night, they eat take out Chinese food on two rolled out sleeping bags in the middle of the living room floor. Peter had found them in one of the boxes from when they used to go camping with Ben and had to convince May not to donate them.

“We’ll go camping again” Peter had promised, fingers gripping the bundle hard. He’s learned to keep the memories he has close because that gap in his mind is getting bigger. The times that he remembers there’s something missing are growing farther and farther apart. 

May knows it’s a lie. The one time they went camping was a nightmare, but she’d heard the desperation in Peter’s voice, and she’s soft, so she lets the sleeping bags stay. 

They both sleep like rocks that night. Peter has learned to keep the buzzing in his skin on the backburner. Most of the time these days, it works. 

\---

**Peter Parker (9:02 am): _I remember taking your shield in Germany. That was pretty cool._**

**Steve (9:05 am): _I’m glad you look back on that fondly. I can’t say I do._**

**Peter (9:05 am): _What do you remember about Germany?_**

**Steve (9:06 am): _Not a whole lot. Regret. It’s mostly a blur these days._**

\---

By the middle of the second day, the back wall of the storage locker comes into sight. 

“May! I see the finish line!” Peter lets out a whoop of excitement. He moves a box out of the way, and finally sees… his bed. “And my stuff, thank god.” Peter hastily pushes boxes off his bare mattress and lies on it, contentedly.

“I was starting to think that Pepper threw your stuff out.” May jokes. It earns a very sarcastic “ha ha” from Peter. 

Peter’s already moved on to opening boxes labeled ‘Peter’s Room’. “The model Death Star is still intact.” he grins, holding it up for May to look at. She only rolls her eyes and reminds him that they’re supposed to be cutting back. Peter still keeps it. 

The further he gets into sorting through his stuff, the more Peter’s skin starts to itch. It’s the first time he’s felt it in a few days, something he’d been more than happy to forget, despite his commitment to try to remember. It’s heavy and uneasy.

Peter digs through a few more things before coming across a small box stacked under his desk. He crawls in to grab it and immediately his stomach drops. With shaky hands, Peter lifts the lid off the box. 

There isn’t a lot of stuff in it. On top is a birthday card, signed by Pepper. Peter runs his fingers over the card, feeling invisible bumps on the blank spaces as if someone else had written there but the ink had long faded. The hair on the back of his neck is standing tall now, and he feels a familiar swell in his throat, but he’s _not_ gonna cry and he shakes it away. Underneath the card is Peter’s Stark Industries ID badge. He’s grinning enthusiastically in it, laughing almost, and Peter wonders briefly what it was that made him react like that. 

The gold, however, is hiding just below the ID badge. It’s a Stark Industries crew neck, faded and worn. Peter picks it up gingerly and breathes in. Behind the dust, it smells faintly of motor oil, and some distant cologne Peter can't quite name. 

Tears fall from his eyes before he even realizes what’s happening, and he drops the sweater back into the box like it’s poison. He’s breathing fast, and it’s hard to focus. He’s going to be sick right here in this storage locker, he’s sure of it. Distantly, he hears a voice raised with concern and then he feels a hand on his back and May is speaking soothingly into his ear. 

“I— I—” Peter stammers. He can’t form a coherent thought in his head. 

“It’s ok, baby.” May soothes, she’s calm and steady, and Peter is so, _so_ thankful for that right now. May waits until Peter is breathing normally before she asks. 

“What’s wrong?”

Peter shakes his head and rubs tears away with the back of his hands. “I don’t know where that sweater came from.” He says “It’s not mine.” It sounds stupid. Some far off part of his brain recognizes that, but it’s all he can come up with.

May stops rubbing Peter’s back for a moment to look in the box. “It’s Stark Industries, are you sure you didn’t have it?” 

Peter’s nodding frantically. “Yes, I’m sure. I always wanted one, but he…” Peter stops and breathes. He shakes his head. “No. No. _Pepper_ never had any on hand.”

“Ok.” May says “We’ll ask Pepper about it, ok? I won’t do anything with it yet.” 

Peter lets May take away the box, and a few minutes later shakes himself off. They finish clearing out the locker three hours later.

\---

_“What’s wrong, Pete? You freezing to death or something?”_

_“It’s so cold in here Mr. Stark. I swear I don’t know how you’re functioning right now.”_

_Tony snorts. “That’s because you’re half arachnid. Put this on.” He grabs a sweater and tosses it at Peter._

_“What a second,” Peter says, looking down at the front of the sweater “Is this a Stark Industries sweater? I’ve wanted one of these for so long. Everyone down in the labs has them you know. It’s like a rite passage.”_

_“What’s with these crewnecks? I didn’t realize they were such a hot commodity.” Tony teases and Peter rolls his eyes. “Yeah, ok. When you’re 18 you get one, deal? You can go be buddy buddy with everyone in the labs then, ignore me all you want once you fit in with the cool kids.”_

\---

Peter and May spend that night in the living room on sleeping bags again even though they probably don’t need to. All the furniture is moved in, but the place is in disarray. Still, it’s nice to have this, even for one night. 

They sit on the couch to eat, surrounded by unpacked boxes and bubble wrap. Tonight it’s leftover lasagna sent over by Ned’s mom. 

“How does it look like more stuff than was in the storage locker? I didn’t think that was possible. We threw out like half of it. Moving apparently defies the laws of physics.” Peter jokes. He’s exhausted from the day, and already feels tired thinking about everything they have to do tomorrow.

“You know what?” May says. “It looks bad right now, but I think by the weekend we’ll be in good shape.” 

Peter hums and picks at the last of the food on his plate. 

“Peter. Do you want to talk about what happened earlier?” May asks. She’s looking at him closely, and Peter both hates the scrutiny and welcomes it. That meme about the mortifying ordeal of being known? Peter _really feels_ it right now. 

Peter finishes dinner silently, unsure of what to say to May. When he’s done, he takes her empty plate and brings it over to the sink. 

“I feel weird. Ever since coming back.” Peter says. The lasagna leaves stains of red against the plates and all Peter can see are splatters of blood. He hurries to rinse them off. The water is scalding hot but he welcomes it. It’s nice to feel something besides the urge to be sick and the terrible, overwhelming sadness he’s been feeling.

“You gotta be a little more descriptive, honey,” May says. “I’m many things but I’m not a mind reader. I want to help you.”

Peter sighs and scrubs the dishes harder. And he tells her. 

Peter tells her about the forgetting, and the sadness, and the terrible, terrible ache inside of him. He tells her about his unlikely friendship with Steve and feeling sick to his stomach looking at Morgan, and the Stark Industries sweater that definitely isn’t his. About somehow deep inside himself knowing that _something_ is wrong, but not knowing what it is.

May, God bless her, doesn’t think that Peter is crazy. She listens to him fully, intently. She leads him back to the couch and brings Peter tea when he gets worked up and needs to settle back down. 

“Can’t you feel it?” Peter asks. He’s hiccuping softly into his tea now. “There’s something missing. Or off… or… I don’t know what.”

May shakes her head and murmurs softly. “I don’t feel anything different, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t. Your senses are different from mine, and if you say that something feels off, I believe you.” 

Peter curls up on the couch. May puts an arm around him.

“And Steve feels the same way?” she asks. 

“He’s misremembering things too. He knows enough to know it feels wrong, at least. I don’t know if he feels the other stuff.” Peter admits. “Isn’t it weird though? I never really spoke to him before the Snap.”

May frowns slightly. “So why are you all buddy-buddy now?” 

Peter snorts. “I don’t know. I know I can trust him and that’s about it. Don’t know why I do, don’t know how I know.”

She nods and settles into the couch. “So you’re teaming up. You used to have a Captain America lunch box, you remember that?” May grins. “Seven-year-old Peter would love to see you now.”

Peter groans and throws a hand over his eyes. May laughs and ruffles his hair, and the chill runs through him again. The action is familiar, a ghost of something done by another person. 

“I’m here, whatever you need.” May says. She holds out her arms and pulls Peter into a hug. 

“I know.” Peter says. And he does. 

\--- 

Peter goes out patrolling after dinner, and when he makes it back to his bedroom that night (after letting May know he’s made it home alive, of course) he tucks himself underneath the covers and he can barely keep away the chill that has formed deep in his bones. 

\---

He feels alright the next morning until he opens his closet to see the Stark Industries sweater hanging there listless and realizes he’d forgotten all about it. He grabs hold of it without a second thought and rushes out into the kitchen, panic swelling deep and uncomfortable in his chest.

“May, do you remember our conversation from yesterday?” he asks. 

She’s sitting at the table, a cup of coffee in her hand. “I said we’d be in good shape by the weekend, but that won’t happen if you don’t help me.” She puts the coffee cup down with a sigh. “Please don’t tell me you have somewhere to be. Unpacking by myself will take twice as long.”

Peter’s throat swells. “Nothing else?”

May shakes her head. “No. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing… I, uh, I’m just going to start on the boxes in my room, ok?” Peter stumbles back into his room and shuts the door behind him. 

It’s not possible. It can’t be. There’s no way May could forget that quickly. That _Peter_ would forget that quickly. With shaky hands, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and frantically dials Steve. 

Steve picks up after one ring. “Hey, kid. What’s up?” 

“I’m forgetting. I’m forgetting really fast.” Peter blurts out. He’s clutching the crewneck in one hand like a lifeline and his phone in the other. "I didn't think it was going to happen like this, and I told May about it yesterday, and now she doesn't remember either, and-"

“Forgetting?" Steve interrupts him "Peter, what are you talking about?” Steve’s confusion is tangible. It grates down Peter’s skin and through his body, cold and careless. 

Peter’s voice is hoarse. “The misremembering. We talked about it at Pepper’s after dinner last week. Please tell me you know what I’m talking about. _Please_.” 

“Peter I’m not sure what you mean. Are you all alright? Is May there?”

Peter hangs up on Steve. He doesn't remember.

Peter's in this alone.

His stomach churns dangerously and he barely makes it to the toilet before he throws up his cheerios.


	4. Four

“Let’s start at the beginning. What about this new suit? Who gave it to you?” 

Ned sits in Peter’s desk chair, popping popcorn into his mouth and staring pointedly at the quasi crime board they’ve created on Peter’s wall. There’s hardly anything on it except for two sticky notes pinned up with “The Compound” written on one and “SI Sweater” on another. It’s… extremely vague, but it’s a start and it’s something Peter can visualize. The problem doesn’t have to exist solely in his head anymore, and looking at it on the wall is like taking a breath of fresh air.

So May and Steve forgot. It’s not the end of the world. It takes three days of thinking while unpacking the apartment for Peter to convince himself of this, but it’s been a week and he’s in a relatively good headspace now. He’s taken Ned’s helpful advice and counted the times he’s been able to rely on himself. Peter has done solo before, and he can do it again. Sure, help would have been nice, but it’s not necessary. 

It’s a problem and Peter just needs to tackle it.

But he’s just like any other superhero - Peter needs his Guy In The Chair. He enlisted Ned once he got his head screwed on right, and Ned really is doing an amazing job considering Peter has to remind him about what they’re working on every few hours. He meets Peter’s near-hysteria with level-headedness which is exactly what Peter needs to figure this thing out.

“That’s not really the beginning,” Peter says slyly 

Ned throws popcorn at him. Peter catches it in his mouth and grins. “Your first suit, then. Who gave it to you?”

“Stark Industries,” Peter replies instantaneously. The words spill out of his mouth in a response so automatic he doesn’t even question it. “It’s their tech through and through. Their logos are all over everything.” He grabs a handful of popcorn from the bowl and shoves it into his mouth. 

“And you’re sure?” Ned asks. “Really think about it.”

Peter tries, he really does. But his head is splitting itself open the more he focuses on it. He paces around the small room in a huff. 

“I know it’s hard, but you told me to make you question everything. Pretend we’re living in _The Matrix_ or something. Find the black cat.” Ned continues.

The pacing continues as Peter racks his brain. “I got that suit so long ago, Ned. I don’t know if I can-”

“C’mon just think about it. Real hard. Like we’re back on Academic Decathlon and we’re one question away from winning, and you really wanna impress MJ.”

Peter shoots him a glare but thinks. “I got the first suit in Germany. I know because that was the first time I wore something that wasn’t… my suit… and it was so _cool_.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“I know, I know.” Peter’s quiet as he paces some more. His head is aching like he’s been smacked with a baseball bat, and he’d give anything to be doing something mindless right now. 

But he remembers coming home after school and seeing May sitting on the couch with… somebody he knew? No, he didn’t know them. He knew _of_ them. The person knew he was Spiderman from clips they’d seen on the internet. The person had figured it out.

_So you’re the Spiderling. Crime-fighting spider. Spiderboy?_

_Spiderman._

_Not in that onesie you’re not._

Peter takes a shaky breath. “I knew of them. Whoever it was, I didn’t know them, like, personally, but I knew who they were.” He remembers piercing eyes. Curious and inquisitive, and they saw right through him.

_You’re in dire need of an upgrade. Top to bottom. Systemic, that’s why I’m here._

Peter sits down on his bed and feels the ghost of a hand pat his back. A promise. His stomach is in his throat, and he’s sweating profusely, and he can’t quite seem to _say_ it. 

“Peter, are you ok-”

“A man.” Peter interrupts. He’s panting with the exertion of saying the words. “It was a man.” 

“That’s all you can get?” Ned presses

Peter tries to poke at the memory, dig up whatever it is that’s buried so far down, but all he gets is a jolt of pain that shoots through his head like lightning. “Advil, please.” is all he replies. 

Ned passes him the bottle without protest. 

“Ok, we’ll run with it,” Ned says. He writes something on a sticky note and sticks it onto Peter’s wall. “A man. That’s a start.”

\---

Peter and Ned take the next three weeks to gather as much of Peter’s “memory data” as they can. It’s hard work, and Peter’s spent most of it downing painkillers like they’re candy trying to stop the splitting pain that has been creeping through his head. It doesn’t help that he burns through them in as much time as it takes to swallow one.

They’ve upgraded slightly from pinning things directly into the wall to instead pinning them onto the giant corkboard May bought for their “project”.

May had come into Peter’s room one afternoon, snack in hand, only to find push pins stuck all over the new wall. She had ripped into them for a minute, lecturing them about beating up the new apartment. Peter and Ned, knowing what was good for them, sat quietly and let her yell. May left shortly after, as she put it “before I say something I regret to two teenage boys who apparently, as smart as they are, don’t have one brain cell to share between the two of them.”

She came back an hour later with a corkboard the size of Peter’s wall and helped them put it up, making them swear that they would not destroy the apartment any farther. Peter and Ned promised and apologized profusely, and May eventually left rolling her eyes with a tired “yeah, we’ll see.”

In the days after, each time May enters Peter’s room, whether it’s for laundry pickup, or a snack, or to make sure they’re sticking to their promise, she never seems to notice anything they’ve put on the board. Her eyes glaze over it, uninterested and undeterred without curiosity or a second thought. May won’t, or can’t as they later hypothesize, think about or interact with anything they’ve got up there.

Peter and Ned add this to the section of the board they’ve titled “Observations (of the scientific variety).” They’ve added their own habits of forgetting and remembering as well. They note how often Ned loses his memory (anywhere between 4 and 10 times a day), and how often Peter loses his. (Peter hasn’t _completely_ lost his memory yet, but he does tend to forget specific facts and details every few days that he’s worked extremely hard to remember.) They attribute this to a few potential factors - Peter’s spider senses, Peter being affected by some sort of radiation or illness or _something_ that he picked up at the Compound after defeating Thanos, and Peter’s relationship with the forgotten subject in question. 

Their most current theory is that it’s some combination of these three factors. 

Peter doesn’t like to think about the last one. He’s lost his parents and Ben already and he hates the idea that there’s someone else out there that he has not only lost but has forgotten about. 

But Peter's main concern for right now is that he doesn’t want to end up like Steve or May. Whatever it is he’s remembering, or, not remembering, he’s sure there’s a good reason for it. He doesn’t want to let it go, not until he gets answers. 

\---

Outside of trying to pull memories out of thin air, Peter’s saving grace the past three weeks has been patrolling. No matter how painful a day of trying to line up the scattered pieces of his memory is, once Peter starts swinging he feels exceptionally better.

Today is no different. It’s been a bad day, and Peter has spent most of it reminding Ned what they’re doing. Ned seems to be forgetting faster these days, and so is Peter. It’s hard on morale and trying to focus is like trying to do a _Where’s Waldo_ in thick fog, if Waldo wore all grey and pretended to have never existed at all. 

But Peter made it to patrol. If he can do that, he can make it to tomorrow. And then the cycle starts all over again. Small victories, right? 

The night is cool and clear which, in Peter’s humble opinion, is the best type of night for patrolling. He makes his way through the streets of Queens with ease, directing traffic at a set of lights that are out until an officer gets there, stopping a robbery in an apartment building, and very diplomatically encouraging a group of thirteen-year-olds _not_ to graffiti all over a new playground, but instead to graffiti the side of an abandoned building like regular teenagers.

Peter even helps an old lady bring her groceries home from the corner store and politely refuses when she tries to shove a five dollar bill into his hands. He does, however, accept a caramel from the candy dish by her door that looks like it hasn’t been touched in weeks. 

Fifteen minutes later, Peter is sitting on top of a building still happily sucking on the caramel, looking out over Queens fondly. All in all, it’s been a good night. He’s about to pack it up and head home for the night when he hears an anguished scream a few blocks away. Before he even has a chance to think, Peter leaps off the building, swinging towards the sound.

He arrives to find a middle-aged woman crouched behind a car. She’s sobbing loudly, not even noticing Spiderman’s appearance. Peter doesn’t see any threats, and slowly makes his way towards the woman. 

“Hello. I’m Spiderman.” Peter says calmly. “Are you alright? Can I help you?”

The woman takes a gasping breath and looks at him sharply, relief passing over her face at the sight of him. “Yes, yes. My ex-husband... he took my son. He snatched him right in front of me and took off in a van. Oh my god.” She covers her face in her hands with a loud sob. 

A kidnapping. It’s not exactly Peter’s forte, and he hopes somewhere in the back of his mind that he never has to encounter it enough for it to become his strong spot. Nevertheless, he meets her with unwavering confidence. “Call the police and tell them exactly what they told me, can you do that?”

The woman nods frantically and reaches for her phone with unsteady hands. 

“What’s your son’s name?” Peter asks. 

“Alex. Alex Hodder.” The woman says, and then she’s calling 911, clutching her phone to her ear. 

“And yours?” Peter asks. He’s got his web-shooters ready to, about to launch into action. 

“Karen.” 

“I’m going to get your son back, Karen.” Peter says, and then he’s off. 

Peter has just turned a corner when a cool voice begins speaking. It takes him a second to realize it’s not coming from an external source, it’s coming from inside his suit. 

“ _Hello, Peter. How can I assist you?”_

Peter stutters, flinching mid-swing and slams ungracefully into the side of a building. Pain shoots through the left side of his body as he lowers himself to the ground. 

_“Please watch where you’re going, Peter.”_

That _voice_. He knows it, somewhere deep within the recesses of his mind. It’s familiar, but he can’t seem to place it anywhere. The hair on the back of Peter’s neck stands up. 

“Who? Who are you?” Peter chokes out. 

_“My name is Karen. I am the artificial intelligence program in your suit. I was created to help you and keep you safe.”_

Peter’s head spins. An AI for his suit? He can’t remember it, but feels the familiarity of the voice run through his body. No wonder Peter’s patrols have felt so quiet and empty. Karen hadn’t been in his suit for the past month. 

“But I-”

Karen interrupts him. “ _The van holding Alex Hodder is heading towards the highway. The closest intersection point is three blocks away.”_ A map with directions pops up on a screen inside his suit. 

Right. He’s supposed to be saving a kidnapped kid. Peter will have to save the questions for Karen for later. 

“Ok. Ok. Yeah. Let’s do this.”

Peter stands up again and leaps into the air, following Karen’s directions. Within a few minutes, he’s caught up with the van, swinging behind it as it speeds mercilessly down the road. 

“What’s the best way to do this, Karen? I don’t want anyone to get hurt, and that thing is going pretty fast.” 

“ _I suggest webbing the road which will cause the vehicle to gradually stop. This is the best way to ensure the child does not sustain any physical injuries”_

Peter nods and swings ahead. He shoots a web at the road and sure enough, when the van rolls through it mere seconds later it slows down to half speed. Encouraged, Peter hits the road a few more times, and less than a minute later, the van rolls to a stop. 

The driver is still behind the wheel revving the engine like it’ll be enough to escape being glued to the road. Peter opens the door and webs up the man behind the wheel. From a few blocks away the sound of rapidly approaching ambulances reaches his ears. 

“How many people are in there?” Peter asks Karen. 

_“There are two passengers in the back of the van.”_

“Is he armed?”

_“Yes.”_

Peter swears and raises his voice. “Listen, buddy. I just want us all to walk out of here safely. Hand the kid over.” He slides the side door open slowly, coming face to face with the barrel of a gun. The man holding it clutches a petrified six-year-old to his side who Peter assumes must be Alex Hodder. 

“Not exactly father of the year, are you?” Peter says before he webs up the gun in the man’s hand. The man drops his hold of Alex, shocked. “What, never heard of Spiderman before?” Peter uses the distraction to knock him to the back of the van, webbing him up against the back doors. 

The first police cars are pulling up to the scene as Peter pulls a wide-eyed Alex from the van, slamming the door shut behind him. “Hi Alex, I’m Spiderman. I’m going to get you back to your mom.”

Alex slides his hand into Spiderman’s outstretched one. They walk towards the cops slowly, and Karen emerges from one of the cars. She rushes towards them frantically and pulls Alex into a bone-crushing hug. 

Peter’s chest clenches painfully. 

“They’re in the van, fellas.” Peter tells the police approaching him, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the webbed up vehicle, and takes off. 

\---

Peter clamours back through the window to his dark bedroom and flops down on the bed, suit still on, exhausted. 

_“Good work today, Peter.”_ Karen says _“I suggest you apply ice to your side to avoid bruising.”_

Peter’s throat grows thick at her kindness. “Karen, who put you in my suit?”

The AI makes a sharp beeping noise, almost like a glitch. _“That information is classified.”_

“You said you were created to help me. If you could tell me who created you, that would really help me out.” Peter pleads. It’s been a frustrating day, and he could use a win. 

Plus, an AI’s memory doesn’t work the same way human memory does. Whatever it is that Peter’s looking for, Karen must be able to remember, right?

Karen is quiet for several long minutes before responding. _“I apologize, Peter, but I do not know.”_

Peter pulls his mask off with a frustrated groan and gets up from the bed. He scribbles “KAREN” on a sticky note and pins it to the board. 

\---

Peter tells Ned about his breakthrough the next morning on a walk to Delmar’s. The bodega is an extra twenty minutes from Peter’s new apartment, but there’s no way he’s giving up the sandwiches over the added distance. 

They sidestep a skateboarder barreling down the middle of the sidewalk and join strides again without missing a beat. 

“I can understand humans forgetting.” Ned says, hoisting up his backpack “Brains are weird. Mass memory loss could maybe be attributed to some kind of chemical, or hypnosis, maybe even an augmented form of collective trauma… I don’t know. But an AI not being able to access that? That’s strange.”

Peter kicks a pebble off the sidewalk. The reappearance of Karen has left an uneasy feeling in his gut. He had assumed they were making progress, but if Peter hadn’t been able to remember Karen, and Karen couldn’t remember anything… well, it didn’t exactly leave him feeling optimistic. “I feel like we’re out of our league here. I can try to remember as much as I want but if this is affecting Karen too we’re screwed.”

They turn a corner, the Manhattan skyline rising up in the distance. They’ve spent _weeks_ documenting the gaps in Peter’s memory - and to an extent the collective memory. They haven’t been able to find anything about a missing man who may or may not be pretty influential.

“We probably are, but it hasn't stopped us before. Peter, we’ve logged a bunch of information that could either be extremely helpful or it could all be bullshit.” Ned says. Peter snorts, but Ned pushes on. “Let’s assume it’s not bullshit, for the sake of our egos. We’ve got a bunch of pieces of the puzzle, let’s start putting the puzzle together.”

Peter pauses on the sidewalk and looks squarely at Ned. “You’ve really been hitting it out of the park with the metaphors. Maybe you should consider poetry.”

“Peter, Peter, Peter. You assume I’m not already writing poetry. I am and always have been a multi-hyphenate.”

Peter laughs but continues. “I guess we start with what we have. There are some fairly obvious areas, sure. We know we’re looking for a man. I probably know him, although maybe I didn’t at first. He gave me my suit, he was the reason I was in Germany.” The gears in his head begin to whir. 

“Right. And then the Staten Island Ferry. You said none of the Avengers helped you out with that, but it definitely went sideways.”

_Is everyone okay?_

_No thanks to you._

Peter goes lightheaded and shakes his head. “No, it wasn’t any of them. I… I think I remember saving it by myself but that’s impossible. There were news clips with witnesses all saying that there were two people.”

_I just wanted to be like you._

_And I wanted you to be better._

The ghost of the words hit Peter sharply like a punch in the gut. He falters and slows to a stop, sagging against a light pole. The words echo in his mind poignant and clear but without a voice attached. If Peter thinks hard enough he can almost hear the waves of disappointment behind them.

Ned shoots him a look of concern but Peter waves him off gingerly. They make their way to an empty bench to sit down anyway.

“So we assume that Mystery Man was there too.” Ned says. 

“I told you, we’re not calling him Mystery Man.” Peter huffs. 

“The Vanishing Man, then.” Peter shakes his head. “Mr. Puzzle. Forgotten Man? He Who Literally Cannot Be Named?” Ned prods. The corners of Peter’s mouth pull into a small grin. “We’ll workshop it.” Ned says brightly. 

“Whoever he is, yes, he was there too.” Peter agrees. “And I’m pretty sure he saved my ass that day. I made that mess, I know that. It’s clear in my memory, no fog there. But there’s no way I could have fixed it alone.”

“I think it’s safe enough to deduce he’s an Avenger, right? It would make sense. He’d be able to get you a suit. He could have helped with the ferry. Maybe he’s brilliant. He probably put Karen in your suit.” Ned picks up speed as he goes along. 

And it makes sense. It would explain why Steve seemed to remember until he didn’t. Why the itch under his skin was so intense at the Compound after Thanos. Peter’s head falls into his hands as his brain throbs uncomfortably. He can almost feel the answer itching somewhere in the back of his mind.

Still _just_ out of reach. 

“Yes.” Peter concedes. “I think he’s an Avenger.”

Ned lets out a low whistle. Peter tips his head back to look at the sky and feels the truth of it echo through every bone in his body. 

A car drives by blasting AC/DC, and all Peter can think is that it feels like something similar to relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updating already?? lmao who am I


	5. Five

Despite Peter’s personal inability to focus on anything besides his now-dubbed “Missing Avenger Situation”, the rest of the world, in all of its obliviousness, is moving on Post-Blip. The government has established relief funds and programs to reunite families. There are mass job fairs, and seminars on the “Lost Five Years,” and incentives to get people back to school. It’s a slow crawl forward, but it’s still forward. The world is returning to normal. 

As normal as it can be when half the population returns after disappearing for five years.

The world-wide return to some semblance of normal also means that Midtown is opening again. After any other attack or casual five-year disappearance, Peter would have welcomed this with open arms. Instead, the only thing he feels leading up to the first day of school is dread. 

May is happy about it, Peter knows this. She’s been worried about him the past few weeks. Worried about his long nights spent on his “project”, worried about his tendency to obsess, about his recent lack of sleep and lack of focus. May thinks that getting back into routine will be good for him.

If Peter’s honest, she’s probably right. Or, she would be in any other circumstance. 

But when Peter committed to getting to the bottom of whatever he was feeling post-Thanos, he had hoped that he’d have had it figured out by this point. It’s been nearly two months since the Snap and on his worst days, all he tells himself is that he’s not much farther than where he was on day one. On the better days, Peter knows he’s made progress. The past two months have made the unsettling churn in his stomach, tension in his head, and the layer of doubt that has coated over his skin an unpleasant day-to-day constant.

Peter hoped he’d be able to start school with a clear mind and one more win on his side. 

Instead, he’s going back to school still riddled with the same anxieties and troubles that have plagued him for the last two months and a barely half solved mystery. He still feels the uncomfortable itch across the back of his neck, and fuzziness in his head when he tries to think about the situations he can’t fully remember. Peter hasn’t been able to focus on anything not “Missing Avenger” related for weeks and he’s 99% sure that adding school stresses on top of that will be absolute hell. 

He’s not wrong. 

They go back to school the week after Peter and Ned have their epiphany on the way to Delmar’s. After they’d celebrated the realization with a sandwich and ice cream, Peter and Ned had rushed back to Peter’s room to write down their findings. 

They’re lucky they did because it wasn’t until nearly dinnertime the next day that Peter studied his corkboard and saw the sticky note with “MISSING AVENGER” written in all capital letters, and then realized he had forgotten about it. The already-botched memories came back to him slowly and in pieces, and Peter spent the hour trying to force himself out of a guilt trip for forgetting. 

But he hasn’t forgotten since, and going into Day One, Peter reluctantly counts that as a tiny, tiny win. 

\---

The first day back to school is exactly what Peter expects: pure chaos. 

He arrives early hoping to avoid the worst of the crowds and give his senses a bit of relief on what will definitely be a sensory overload kind of day, but it seems like the rest of the student body has the same idea in mind. There are students _everywhere_ , spilling out over the steps and onto the sidewalk, chatting, smiling, laughing. 

Celebrating some semblance of normalcy. 

Peter eventually makes it through the front door, coaching himself through the noise, and wanders his way through the familiar halls of Midtown and the hoards of students catching up with each other. 

It’s overwhelming, the unfiltered ecstatic joy of it all. Peter’s hair stands on end as he tries to make sense of the waves of new faces. They’re walking around like they own the place and Peter has to remind himself that they were here while he was gone. They’re probably more familiar with Midtown than he is right now. Once he focuses, Peter notes that there are familiar faces too. Some that are too familiar, he thinks as he catches a glimpse of Flash through the crowd and hastily turns on his heel to speed the other way. 

At one point a chant starts, accompanied by shouts and gleeful laughter. It’s loud and unapologetically energetic. An unstoppable force that vibrates down the hall and through Peter’s brain without remorse. 

A banner at the end of the hallway reads “THANK YOU AVENGERS” in large letters. It’s backed on a photo of The Avengers in action, but Peter can feel the absence of _him_ , of the Missing Avenger, even just looking at the mass-produced banner. Peter turns away before the throbbing in his head and the uneasiness in his stomach becomes something more. 

It almost makes him want to skip school. But he can’t do that, not on day one. 

Instead, Peter shoots Ned a quick text asking where he is before ducking into an empty classroom out of the way of his celebrating classmates. 

He’s shutting the door behind him when he hears a familiar voice call out.

“You ok, Parker? You look like you’re five seconds from keeling over.”

Peter whips his head around to find raised eyebrows and a familiar, unimpressed face staring back at him. It’s MJ. She’s sitting at a desk bent over a notebook, pencil in hand. Suddenly the throb in his head seems like it happened so long ago. Peter’s heart skips a beat and then takes off thudding at a rapid pace. She’s alive and here in school… and probably pissed at him. 

They had texted a few times since coming back after the Blip, mostly to catch up and make sure neither of them had already made it through high school. But Peter had also ghosted her more than a few times, giving shitty excuses for cancelled plans and ignored texts. In his defense, he was going through a lot that was all basically Spiderman-adjacent, and MJ had no idea he was Spiderman. Peter wasn’t exactly in the right headspace to let her know that he is Spiderman while dealing with all... that. 

“Yeah, um, yeah. I’m good.” Peter stutters. He feels his face heat up and wishes with all his heart that the ground could open up and swallow him whole. 

“Good.” MJ slams her notebook shut and walks over to him. 

And then punches Peter hard in the arm. 

His hand flies up to cover the area immediately out of habit more than actual pain. Although MJ did throw a mean punch. “Ow.” He hisses. 

MJ’s frown quickly turns into a shit-eating smirk. “Ok, I’m over it. It’s good to finally see you.”

She sits down and turns back to her notebook. Peter stands in the same place awkwardly. 

“I’m… I’m sorry I was terrible at answering.” Peter spills “It’s just-”

MJ holds up her hand to stop him. “No need. It’s been a hard few weeks. Everyone deals with it differently, or so I’ve read. In the future, just give a heads up when you need space. Got it?”

Peter nods gratefully and slides into an empty desk beside her. “There’s a lot of new people out there.”

“Yeah, all annoying too. Though, they’re probably a lot more useful in academic decathlon than us now.” MJ pauses, studying Peter for a moment. She puts her pencil down. “For the record, and don’t you dare ever make me repeat this, I’m glad you and Ned were blipped. I’ve still got two friends at school, even if you guys are losers.”

Peter traces an X over his heart. Scout’s honour. “So we’re friends?” 

“For now,” MJ says enigmatically

Peter takes a slow breath. “For the record, I’m glad you got blipped too.” MJ lets out one dazzling grin and goes back to her notebook. 

They sit there in comfortable silence for a while until there’s a large bang, and suddenly Ned is barreling through the door. He’s breathing hard, eyes wide. 

“Dude. Georgia Bennett’s little sister is out there. Except she’s not little anymore and she is-” He pauses to raise his eyebrows dramatically. “She had a _huge_ crush on me before the Blip. Think she still does?”

MJ rolls her eyes and drops her head to the table.

\---

They have an assembly after homeroom to welcome everyone back. It’s school board mandated, Principal Moritia tells them, supposed to ease the transition from the “challenging times” back to everyday life. 

It’s a reminder that things will return to normal. Also that no matter how excited everyone is, there’s still no running in the hall. 

Peter’s homeroom class arrives last to the overcrowded gym, scrambling to find places to sit. He spots Ned and MJ in the bleachers and hurries to squeeze in beside them.

“Any luck with Georgia’s sister?” Peter asks Ned as he sits down. It earns him a sharp eye roll from Ned and a snicker from MJ. 

“Don’t start,” Ned mutters as the lights dim slightly. 

There’s a screen set up at the front of the gym, illuminated with a stock photo of smiling teenagers outside a school. Principal Morita paces in front of it sporting a new pair of glasses and grey streaks throughout his hair. 

Slowly the murmur of the crowd settles and all eyes fall on the screen unenthusiastically.

“Hello everyone!” Principal Moritia exclaims. “I can’t begin to express how grateful I am to see all of your faces again. I suppose we have The Avengers to thank for that.” The students burst into applause and loud, whooping yells. 

Peter does his best not to think about the all-encompassing fear that kept him alive while fighting Thanos’ army. He tries not to think about the smell of burning flesh and the unavoidable sight of blood on the battlefield. About gunfire and confusion and panic and bombs. Or his devastation at finding out that even after making it back, even after beating Thanos, there’s still somebody who is so, so lost. 

_Can you hear me? It’s me, Peter. Hey… we won. We won, you did it sir, you did it._

The ghost of the words settle uncomfortably in the back of Peter’s mind.

Moritia eventually settles the crowd down and continues. **“** Whether you are returning after one summer or after five, welcome back to Midtown. It’s going to be a great year.”

Peter tunes out after that. He’s not in the mood for the whole new year, fresh start schtick. Not yet. 

He’s shaken out of his stupor when Ned jams his knee against Peter’s. Peter’s eyes snap to him, alarmed and annoyed. Ned jerks his chin towards the screen and Peter follows his eyesight to see one of the teachers fumbling to play a Captain America PSA. 

It’s a new one, Peter’s sure of that. Steve has the same jaded and tired look in his eyes that he had when Peter last saw him at Pepper’s despite the easy smile on his face. 

“Teamwork.” Captain America says. He’s sitting on a single chair in front of a prop whiteboard. “That’s how The Avengers helped everyone come back safely from The Blip, and it’s how we’re going to move forward together as a community and as a nation. As you start the new school year, be kind to yourselves and to each other. It’s ok to struggle, but know that you are not in this alone. Your teachers and guidance counselors have resources to help you both with your studies and with your mental health. If you need help, don’t hesitate to ask.”

_Oh_. So the government is worried about trauma. 

“The next step starts with you, and I hope you become the role models that the children of today and tomorrow will follow.” Captain America continues “As they say, there’s no ‘I’ in team. If we move forward together, we can create a better future for everyone.” He raises his arm in a salute and the video shuts off. 

Peter drops his head into his hands. He had hardly spoken to Steve in the past few weeks, but is this what he’s been up to? Doing friendly videos for a government that had a bounty on his head just a few months back? 

Years. Peter has to remind himself. It was a few years back. 

Peter can’t get it out of his mind the rest of the day as he moves from class to class. The exhaustion in Steve’s voice at dinner that night. Their argument. Steve’s admission that he knew something was wrong too. And now, even after Steve has forgotten, he still has that same empty and sad look in his eyes.

It’s the same look Peter sees in his own eyes every day. 

And someone else’s… someone else had that same look.

Morgan. 

\---

Peter stays up late that night analyzing the corkboard in his room. He hasn’t thought much about Morgan since leaving the lakehouse a few weeks ago, but now that he’s started he can’t get her out of his head. 

He knew her eyes. He _knew_ them. They were familiar and foreign all at the same time, and now Peter’s kicking himself for not having thought about it sooner. 

“I think I might’ve found something to help,” Peter says suddenly after staring at the board for ages. “I need to go see Pepper again.”

Ned’s face is lit up on his computer. They’re facetiming, Ned from where he’s hiding in his Cousin’s bathroom at a family dinner, Peter spinning in his desk chair. 

He’s been avoiding Pepper’s messages and periodic invitations up to the Lakehouse for the last few weeks, brushing them off with white lies and lame excuses in order to focus on trying to make sense of his botched memories and figure out who the Missing Avenger is, but he’s cursing himself for it now. 

He knows from the nearly unbearable pain of the last three weeks that he has to poke at the uncomfortable places to get answers. So why hadn’t he thought about Morgan or Pepper? Hell, why had he hardly thought about the Lakehouse?

“Haven’t you been avoiding her?” Ned asks. There’s some loud screaming somewhere in the background. 

Peter fiddles with a pen. “Yeah. But that makes me the biggest idiot in the world. I thought about dinner at the Lakehouse after seeing that PSA today, and then I started thinking about Morgan, and I couldn’t get her out of my head. I knew her, Ned, except I don’t. And that house felt so, so weird. Why is nothing about it on this board?”

Peter studies the work they’ve done so far. They’ve been so good trying to find out everything they can, and they still missed what feels like a big part of it. 

“Peter-”

“No, I’m serious,” Peter says. “Pepper is so well connected to The Avengers. Why? Why did Stark Industries ever get involved with them? What happened to Morgan’s dad? What is the connection there?”

Ned listens carefully. In the background someone shouts “CAKE!” and Ned lets out a little huff. “I gotta go. But if you think you need to, then do it. Don’t leave any stone unturned.”

Ned hangs up and Peter picks up his phone to text Pepper. 

\---

Pepper, of course, is just glad to hear from him and a few days later Peter is packing his bags and heading up to the Lakehouse for the weekend. 

Happy picks him up outside school on Friday afternoon and they manage to beat it up the highway before rush hour hits. It’s nice to see him again, but the car ride is riddled with unnatural small talk that almost makes Peter wish he had asked May to drive him up. 

Happy and Peter have (mostly) always gotten along well, once they got past Peter calling him with updates ten times an hour, but Peter’s guard is up trying to avoid questions about how he’s been the past six weeks. He’s not sure how to explain that he’s been avoiding calls because he’s been trying to get to the bottom of a mystery that now seems to involve someone they should all know, an Avenger nonetheless, but he doesn’t know _who_ that person is and that no one seems to remember that he is missing at all. 

So Peter tells himself that silence is better. 

After a while of strained conversation, Happy, thank god, takes the hint and trades the big questions in for turning up the radio and they settle into easy conversation about nothing of consequence. The chat about sci-fi movies, old memes Happy is only now becoming aware of, and the best sandwiches in New York. It’s the type of easy conversation that _almost_ makes Peter forget the real reason he’s heading up to the Lakehouse.

It’s not long after they veer off the highway and up the winding driveway that Peter feels the Lakehouse tugging at his mind and body unpleasantly. It’s the same way he felt it last time and it’s the reason he never wanted to come back. The quiet hum running through the air. The churn in his stomach. The heavy thud of his heart trying to beat out of his chest. 

The closer they get the more Peter feels like he’s drowning in it - vibrations that seem to run unnaturally and invisibly through the air, unknown to everyone but him. The air is thick with it, that unknown energy that burns into Peter’s skin and makes him wish that someone else - anyone else - could be the one having to figure this out.

It almost makes him wish he never had any reason to think that there was something wrong in the first place.

When the Lakehouse pulls into sight, Peter has to force himself not to ask Happy to turn around and take him home. Instead, he says nothing as Happy pulls to a stop, focusing on breathing deeply.

“You good, kid?” Happy looks at him concerned. 

“I’m fine,” Peter replies, hopping out of the car and rushing to beat Happy to grab his bag from the trunk. 

He tries not to notice the red and gold toolbox lying forgotten against the side of the house, exactly the way it was the last time Peter was here. It hasn’t been moved an inch and has a thin layer of dirt and dust settled over it. 

Pepper rushes out the door to meet them, pulling Peter into a tight hug. “I am so happy you’re here. We’ve all missed you.”

“That’s what I told him,” Happy says, walking around the car to join them. “Until he told me to shut it and let him listen to the radio in peace.”

Pepper laughs and Peter groans. “C’mon Happy, I never said that.”

“You’re right, you didn’t say that because you hardly shut up about my outdated memes the whole ride.” 

Peter smiles sheepishly and follows Pepper and Happy into the house, trying his best to ignore the shake in his legs and sticky layer of sweating coating his body. 

“Why don’t you go upstairs and get settled,” Pepper says after forcing a snack into him. “Your bedroom is right across from the bathroom. We built this place after the Snap, but he always hoped you’d come back.”

Peter doesn’t ask about the ‘he’ in her sentence because he already knows what the response will be. Some version of “I don’t know where that came from” or “that’s not what I meant.”

He just nods gratefully and bounds up the stairs. 

The room is soft and understated. There’s a heavy comforter on the bed and a flannel blanket folded carefully at the foot of it. At first glance, it could easily be a generic guest bedroom, but Peter walks farther in the room to find framed posters of the original _Star Wars_ movies hanging on the wall, a desk full of Peter’s textbooks, and blackout curtains hanging on the windows. 

Something wells up in his throat, thick and hot. Whoever this person is, Peter must have meant a lot to him. And he must have meant a lot to Peter. The realization hurts deep within his bones, a deep ache Peter feels like he’ll never be able to shake. 

God, he’s in for a rough weekend. 

He wanders around the room slowly, taking note of everything. The mini toolkit in a desk drawer. Extra web fluid stocked in jars tucked into a box in the corner of the room. Limited edition 3000 piece Lego sets for each of the _Star Wars_ movies that came out during the Blip, unopened in the closet. 

The worst, Peter decides, is the picture on the dresser. It’s Peter alone in front of the Stark Industries logo holding up a certificate of completion for the Stark Industries Internship Program with a smile plastered on his face. 

Peter’s going to be sick, he’s sure of it. It’s wrong, it’s all wrong. He _knows_ he wasn’t alone that day. He remembers taking the picture, a familiar hand wrapped around his shoulders encouragingly. 

He didn’t take that picture alone. 

Next to the picture is a glasses case and ignoring the tremor in his hands, Peter opens it. A funny looking pair of black-rimmed, almost square-shaped glasses lies inside on a bed of black satin. Inscribed in gold at the top of the case is “E.D.I.T.H”.

Peter picks them up gingerly and puts them on, but when he looks at himself in the mirror, he feels like he’s experiencing something outside his body. They’re a little big, but somehow also fit him just right. But he looks… he looks like _someone else_. He can almost feel the answer scratching softly at the back of his mind.

A small humming is the only notice Peter has before the glasses come to life. He kicks himself for not expecting it. 

“ _Hello, Peter. My name is EDITH.”_ The glasses say. Another AI. 

Without so much as taking a breath, Peter whips the glasses off and runs downstairs. 

He finds Pepper and Morgan in the kitchen, Pepper rhythmically peeling carrots while Morgan dutifully pushes the scraps into a compost bag. They look up, startled, when Peter appears, chest heaving. 

Pepper’s concerned. “Peter, what’s—”

Peter holds up the glasses in response. Pepper flinches, dropping the carrot peeler. Morgan stares at them, captivated. Her eyes well up silently. It almost makes Peter want to apologize. 

“These were in the guest — my — room,” Peter says. “Why?”

To her credit, Pepper recovers from the incident fast. She picks up the peeler and starts back at the carrots with a small shake of her head. “I don’t know. That stuff has been in there so long now.”

Peter drops his hand, defeated. “Yeah, ok. I… sorry.” 

He was half hoping for a lucky break, just once to get some sort of information that would actually be useful.

The kitchen is silent for a long, awkward moment. “The room is amazing, Pepper. Thank you. I’m just going to bring these back upstairs and then I can help.” Peter says, nodding towards the pile of vegetables that need cutting. 

He’s almost halfway up the stairs when he picks up on a small whine from back in the kitchen followed by words spoken so softly Peter almost misses them. 

“Those are Daddy’s glasses.”


End file.
